In the sphere of music reviewing, ‘legendary’ and ‘seminal’ are as overused as ‘epic’, which heat peak excess circa 2005 in the late stages of the post-rock peak. But when it comes to the Jesus Lizard, what else have we got? This band… woah. Yeah. This band. Nirvana may have been the band that defined grunge, but more than any other act, the Jesus Lizard created the blueprint for a specific strain of noise-rock which has spawned quite literally thousands of bands. The adage goes that absence makes the heart grow fonder, and it’s certainly true that the appreciation of the Jesus Lizard has grown exponentially the twenty-six years – yes, TWENTY-SIX YEARS!!! – since their last release.
You’d probably expect much fanfare and sycophantic jizzing over this unexpected comeback. But that ain’t their style, and respect is due to the band, the label, and the PR for keeping this low-key, with the following hype-free statement: ‘On Rack, the Jesus Lizard have returned reconstituted, refreshed and positively revving. No tepid, bland tracks to show how they’ve “matured” as songwriters. No inane detours into unnecessary genre exercises. And definitely no weird moves into experimental realms that come off just as contrived and calculated as the top of the Billboard Charts.’ And this is welcome: no fans of the band would want any of that guff: what they want is a Jesus Lizard album that sounds like a Jesus Lizard album.
Of course, the fans alone are capable of driving the buzz here. This is an album no-one expected. And 2024 is proving to be a weird year in the domains of noisy alternative guitar music. Shellac dropped an album at almost no notice, and an attendant tour, just weeks before the similarly unexpected – and untimely departure – of Steve Albini. Albini’s departure largely eclipsed a cracking album. And in the wake of this news, one thing became clear: no-one is here forever, and you really have to make the absolute most of every moment. We should, therefore, definitely make the most of this, especially as it’s as solid as it is unexpected.
The Jesus Lizard may have found a wider audience thanks to the grunge explosion – and a split 7” with Nirvana – but they were never really a part of that scene, instead belonging to that altogether more loosely-defined strain of bands that found homes on Touch ‘n’ Go and Amphetamine Reptile who shared a sound, but at the same time, didn’t really.
The Jesus Lizard haven’t mellowed in their absence, despite their advancing years. Consequently, ‘Rack’ – which adheres to their rule for one-word, single syllable album titles – is every inch the deranged monster anyone would rightly expect from the band.
It starts with the single cut ‘Hide & Seek’, a riff-busting blowout that sounds like… well, the Jesus Lizard. What more do you need? It’s scuzzy, noisy, pinned together by a gritty, low-slung and dingy spine-rattling bassline.
The thing about the Jesus Lizard is that while they’re renowned as prime exponents of noise rock, they’ve often been a lot less noisy than many other bands, and rather than pure hard volume and aggression being their thing, they’ve long explored the power of the lurching riff, the jarring, jolting, stop/start percussion, the nuanced jazz detail, and this has never been more true than on ‘Rack’.
As the slower, more lumbering ‘Armistice Day’ illustrates, there’s a low-slung, swaggering bluesiness that permeates ‘Rack’, and while you wouldn’t necessarily say David Yow has mellowed, his vocal is a fair bit more musical, a gritty blues croon featuring more predominantly than the manic yowling old. That isn’t say it’s all super-mellow: ‘Grind’ hits like a juggernaut and there’s plenty of grit ‘n’ spit in the delivery. ‘What If?’ is a sparse, grainy, almost spoken-word piece backed by minimal yet atmospheric instrumentation, while ‘Lord Godiva’, which immediately follows, is a classic riff-monster: if unwashed jeans, week-old sweat, and lairy booze-breath had a sound, it’s this. The Jesus Lizard have based a career on sounding unpredictable, a bit unhinged, and here they capture that perfectly as Yow’s deviant growl and howl veers either side of a melody against a driving four-chord bass-driven stomp while the guitar plays with elements of discord, skewed notes swerving around some remarkable bass work.
With its lumbering groove and mangled vocals, ‘Alexis Feels Sick’, the second (virtual) single cut, already bore all the hallmarks of vintage Jesus Lizard, and sitting band in the middle of the album, it’s perfectly positioned in the set.
The second half of the album seems to accelerate, hurtling headlong into a flailing mess of tempo changes and stuttering guitars that slew and stall over basslines that twist and churn your gut as Yow snarls and drawls, sneers and slurs his way through lines chewed up and gobbed out. ‘Is That Your Hand?’ whips up a maelstrom before the last track, ‘Swan the Dog’ switches from fairground to frenzy in a blink.
Throughout, while Duane Denisons’ guitar lurches and chops nauseatingly, and Yow’s vocals are the sound of pure mania, it’s the rhythm section, consisting of Mac McNeilly and David Wm. Sims’ bass that really drive the songs and hold everything together. As has always been the case with the Jesus Lizard, although there’s a really loose feel to the way the songs are played, they’re deceptively tight, and only work because they are.
So many bands have formed over the last twenty-six years wanting to sound like the Jesus Lizard, and there have been some truly great ones. But the arrival of ‘Rack’ serves as a reminder that they’re still the original and best, and that this is how it’s done.
